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Spotted horse mine discovered by Skookum Joe
Montana OilJournal
July 1935
By Glendolin Damon Wagner
He was known as "Skookum Joe," a name as good as any other to westerners whose ethics did
net encourage undue curiosity. The last night of his life Skookum Joe wrote in his diary: "My
real name is Richard Dick.
I was a bad boy and left home when I was 16." He was probably born in England for the Billings
library has his declaration of intention to become a United States citizen wherein he
acknowledged being a subject of her majesty, Queen Victoria. The final entry in his diary
continues: "Bud, I believe I've located the main lode. You'll find it just three miles above-" And
there the penciled scrawl stopped.
l. D. O'Donnell had staked Skookum Joe to grub, horses, wagon and tools with the
understanding that Joe's finds were to be divided equally between them. With the patient
optimism of the born prospector, Joe, trudged for years over miles of desolate Montana
wilderness, digging into hillsides, panning gravelfrom creek beds, lonely, weary, and persistent.
He kept a daily diary. His little notebooks, scrawled in pencil, covering the years between 1879
and 1895 are in the Billings library, and speak eloquently of the courageous patience of a man
whose life was narrowed to one goal-the finding of gold. They encompass all the tragedies,
little human dramas, struggles, hopes, disappointments, and loneliness of one man's life-flies,
mosquitoes, deep snow, rain, heat, cold, lame or sick horses, illness. From the pages come to us
breaths of the early west.
"June 23,7891. Went to Nye. Old Bill Hamilton back from Canada. Drunk today. Oct. 2, L891.
Three horse thieves hung last night near Red Lodge. May 17, t892. Anarchists hungJ. E. Wason
at Alpine gulch last night. Stole 58 from him. Sheriff in Maiden looking up the case. I don't want
to tell who done it. May 18, L892. Stop at Rhodes. Give cat some meat from box. Stay all night.
Cat dead in morning, So we don't eat anything here. Think anarchists won't try to run out any
white man. Clear this morning so I wash my coat. lf it gets dry I will go to Mocassin."
His days were marked by cooking, washing, tending sick horses and by the high adventure of
locating promising veins of copper, iron, coal, oil and finally, gold. "May L9, L892. Wash clothes
and the black horse."
Skookum Joe probably did more than any other man to open up the mining industry of
Montana. He located the Spotted Horse mine, near Maiden, now a ghost town, which he sold
to McAdow, founder of Coulson, for 55,500 and which McAdow sold later for 5300,000
Joe having located the copper mines on the Stillwater, was responsible for the Nye City boom of
the 1880's. He helped open up the Castle mine and located iron claims on the Stillwater of vast
potential value.
He was, Mr. O'Donnell says, a striking figure even in those early days of idiosyncrasies. Grim,
taciturn, determined, dressed always in corduroys, leading a pack horse, he tramped from
Maiden to Nye, and from Nye to Red Lodge, a man to whom wealth could have no meaning,
devoting his life to the search for gold, and he died a poor man, on the eve of a big discovery.
Most of his later days were beset by illness. Enlargement of the heart, the doctor told Mr.

The Spotted Horse Mine was discovered in 1880 by "Skookum" Joe, a half-breed Indian. He shipped a considerable amount of high-grade ore at that time from the old discovery shaft. It is the belief that the mine was then sold to Patrick McAdow for $5,500. He was a paralytic and confined to a wheelchair, but assayed the ore from the mine with a horn spoon. His wife, who was a very active individual took charge of the mining operations and built a ten stamp mill on the property and recovered somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars. The property was then sold to another outfit for $300,000. They operated the property for some time, but without financial success, so it was taken over by McAdow again who resumed operations his stamp mill and took out another million dollars or so. The property changed hands a couple of times after that and was finally purchased by the St. Paul- Montana Mining Company. It was leased by E. B. Coolidge in 1910, who took four other partners-- Pete Nelson, Oscar Johnson, John Lockovitch and George Wieglenda.

Spotted horse mine discovered by Skookum Joe
Montana OilJournal
July 1935
By Glendolin Damon Wagner
He was known as "Skookum Joe" a name as good as any other to westerners whose ethics did
net encourage undue curiosity. The last night of his life Skookum Joe wrote in his diary: "My
real name is Richard Dick.
I was a bad boy and left home when I was 16." He was probably born in England for the Billings
library has his declaration of intention to become a United States citizen wherein he
acknowledged being a subject of her majesty, Queen Victoria. The final entry in his diary
continues: "Bud, I believe I've located the main lode. You'll find it just three miles above-" And
there the penciled scrawl stopped.
l. D. O'Donnell had staked Skookum Joe to grub, horses, wagon and tools with the
understanding that Joe's finds were to be divided equally between them. With the patient
optimism of the born prospector, Joe, trudged for years over miles of desolate Montana
wilderness, digging into hillsides, panning gravelfrom creek beds, lonely, weary, and persistent.
He kept a daily diary. His little notebooks, scrawled in pencil, covering the years between 1879
and 1895 are in the Billings library, and speak eloquently of the courageous patience of a man
whose life was narrowed to one goal-the finding of gold. They encompass all the tragedies,
little human dramas, struggles, hopes, disappointments, and loneliness of one man's life-flies,
mosquitoes, deep snow, rain, heat, cold, lame or sick horses, illness. From the pages come to us
breaths of the early west.
"June 23,7891. Went to Nye. Old Bill Hamilton back from Canada. Drunk today. Oct. 2, L891.
Three horse thieves hung last night near Red Lodge. May 17, t892. Anarchists hungJ. E. Wason
at Alpine gulch last night. Stole 58 from him. Sheriff in Maiden looking up the case. I don't want
to tell who done it. May 18, L892. Stop at Rhodes. Give cat some meat from box. Stay all night.
Cat dead in morning, So we don't eat anything here. Think anarchists won't try to run out any
white man. Clear this morning so I wash my coat. lf it gets dry I will go to Mocassin."
His days were marked by cooking, washing, tending sick horses and by the high adventure of
locating promising veins of copper, iron, coal, oil and finally, gold. "May L9, L892. Wash clothes
and the black horse."
Skookum Joe probably did more than any other man to open up the mining industry of
Montana. He located the Spotted Horse mine, near Maiden, now a ghost town, which he sold
to McAdow, founder of Coulson, for 55,500 and which McAdow sold later for 5300,000
Joe having located the copper mines on the Stillwater, was responsible for the Nye City boom of
the 1880's. He helped open up the Castle mine and located iron claims on the Stillwater of vast
potential value.
He was, Mr. O'Donnell says, a striking figure even in those early days of idiosyncrasies. Grim,
taciturn, determined, dressed always in corduroys, leading a pack horse, he tramped from
Maiden to Nye, and from Nye to Red Lodge, a man to whom wealth could have no meaning,
devoting his life to the search for gold, and he died a poor man, on the eve of a big discovery.
Most of his later days were beset by illness. Enlargement of the heart, the doctor told Mr.